New Release: 1.1.1

Zcash 1.1.1 has arrived! This release is an Overwinter-compatible version of the Zcash node software, with initial support for Sapling consensus rules and a Sapling testnet activation height set to block 252500.

Overwinter network upgrade

The first block of Overwinter will be block 347500, which is expected to be mined on the 25th of June 2018. Please upgrade to this release, or any release from v1.1.0 onwards, in order to follow the Overwinter network upgrade. See our previous blog post and the Overwinter Network Upgrade page for more information.

Developers preparing for Sapling

Sapling network upgrade

The consensus code preparations for the Sapling network upgrade, as described in ZIP 243 and the Sapling spec are finished and included in this release. Sapling support in the wallet and RPC is ongoing, and is expected to land in master over the next few weeks.

The Sapling MPC is currently working on producing the final Sapling parameters. In the meantime, Sapling will activate on testnet with dummy Sapling parameters at height 252500. This activation will be temporary, and the testnet will be rolled back by version 2.0.0 so that both mainnet and testnet will be using the same parameters. Users who want to continue testing Overwinter should continue to run version 1.1.0 on testnet, and then upgrade to 2.0.0 (which will be released after Overwinter activates).

Sapling can also be activated at a specific height in regtest mode by setting the config options -nuparams=5ba81b19:HEIGHT -nuparams=76b809bb:HEIGHT. These config options will change when the testnet is rolled back for 2.0.0 (because the branch ID for Sapling will change, due to us following the safe upgrade conventions we introduced in Overwinter).

As a reminder, because the Sapling activation height is not yet specified for mainnet, version 1.1.1 will behave similarly as other pre-Sapling releases even after a future activation of Sapling on the network. Upgrading from 1.1.1 will be required in order to follow the Sapling network upgrade on mainnet.

Sapling transaction format

Once Sapling has activated, transactions must use the new v4 format (including coinbase transactions). All RPC methods that create new transactions (such as createrawtransaction and getblocktemplate) will create v4 transactions once the Sapling activation height has been reached.

Other notable changes

zcash-cli: arguments privacy

The RPC command line client gained a new argument, -stdin to read extra arguments from standard input, one per line until EOF/Ctrl-D. For example: